From November, you can find me here instead!

I’m doing a craft fair on the 4th December (my first ever – argh!!), and I have very little time to make a whole load of things! So apologies in advance for a bleak month on the old blogging front, but I’m hoping that from then on, there’ll be a bit more life in the old blog!

Oh, and if you’re local to South Yorkshire, why don’t you nip down on the 4th? I’ll be at the Ramada Encore hotel in Barnsley, along with the actual Santa (so I’ve heard!)

Massive thanks to everyone who took the time to read and comment on my entries here – it meant a lot. Hope to see you on the other side x

Then Mr p&p treated himself to a swanky new ‘puter, and every now and then I am allowed to use it! So here I am!

What have you missed? Well. It might be easier just to show you:

Skully shoes, available on my etsy.

Spotty nappy for Phoebe.

Wool felt shoes, also on etsy.

Ladybird shoes for Cara.

Dinosaur and robot shoes for Nathan.

Upcycled flower tee for Phoebe. Pattern from Growing Up Sew Liberated.

Upcycled blue tee for Phoebe. Same pattern as above.

Jeans for Phoebe. Pattern also from GUSL.

Upcycled fruity bodysuit for Phoebe. Pattern altered from the envelope tee pattern above.

Phew! Hopefully I’ll be back soon to show you a couple of other things I’ve been up to!

What’s that? My shop? Oh yes, did you like how I ever-so-subtly dropped that in there?

As of a few days ago, my etsy shop, mamafactured, has been open for business! It’s not much to look at right now, but I’m hoping to gradually stock it with lovely baby things and make a bit of spare cash so I can visit fabric and yarn shops again without my bank account bursting into tears.

Moving on…

Something that I’ve been wanting to get back into since Phoebe was born is sewing clothes. For both of us, but especially for her. Self-designed, self-drafted, teeny-tiny baby clothes. So today, when she took it upon herself to have a THREE HOUR NAP(!), I got down to exactly that.

Starting small, I drew up a pattern for little pyjama shorts.

The fit isn’t perfect, especially around the legs – they could do with a little extra room for chunky baby thighs, but not half bad for a quick-before-the-baby-wakes-up attempt.

Next, something that I’ve had in my head for a while, and doodled mindlessly a fair few times – ruffle bum baby leggings!

Now we’re talking! Next time I would add an extra ruffle between each existing one – five ruffle strips instead of 3. It looks nice laid out flat, but on an actual baby bum, the spaces between stretch out a little far for my liking. But other than that, not a bad fit at all!

I love leggings on babies this age – she always seems so restricted in jeans. She’s just learned to walk, and the constant plopping down and getting back up seems so much easier clad in something stretchy!

Anyway, there are SO many posts that I need to make – a month’s worth of blogging to catch up on, but that will have to be all for today. I’ll try not to leave it so long next time…

It’s poppy season again. The time of year our garden actually looks halfway decent as we have quite a healthy poppy population growing back there. But this year brought something different. A single purple poppy sprouted among the red ones. I made a mental note to take a photo of it when the baby was in bed. 15 minutes before she went upstairs, a rainstorm washed all the petals off.

I waited two weeks for the other bud to unfold and the SAME THING HAPPENED AGAIN! What are the chances?! Obviously the purple poppy and our garden were not meant to be.

This morning I noticed the universe had arrived at a compromise, and a half red, half purple poppy had snuck up in the night.

In other news, there are two babies due within a week of each other at work, so I’ve been working on baby ripples.

One of the girls has found out the flavour (pink!) and one doesn’t want to know. I’m doing the girly one first, cause it’s easy, and allows me time to ponder unisex-but-still-interesting colours.

This yarn is new in at my local yarn shop and I am in love. It’s Katia Merino 100%, and it’s amazing. Soft, squooshy and machine washable! What else do you need in a baby yarn?

The other thing I’ve been working on is baby shoes. I got a big bag of leather scraps from my local mill shop, and they’re just right for making those soft slipper-type shoes. Even Phoebe, who at one point was militantly anti-shoe, will keep them on and had now started waving them at me and pointing to her feet.

I’m making a few up to sell after the lady in the cake shop round the corner saw them and got very overexcited. They sell handmade things in the shop, and she thinks they’ll do well. Everyone loves baby shoes, after all.

The ones I’ve made so far are a 6-12 month size, and I’ve given them leather or suede soles so little movers and shakers have a bit of grip. I’m planning to do some 0-6 month sizes in softer fabrics for less mobile, more delicate tiny babies, and also 12 month + sizes in slipper-type materials. Cute.

Speaking of little movers and shakers, our little one will be one on Friday. I’m not sure I can believe it.

Lots has happened in that time. I went back to work. It wasn’t as bad as I feared. We had the hottest April since the beginning of time (or something), a royal wedding – you heard about that, I’m sure, a new baby in the family and one amongst my friends, two pregnancies announced, two new teeth and a word (for Phoebe, not me) and a whole lot of sewing (for me!).

Many of the things I make are born out of me being an utter cheapskate. I see something I like, get a major case of the wants, then, nine times out of ten, decide that I can probably make it myself for cheaper. This was definitely the case with my latest project.

We thought about using cloth nappies with Phoebe before she was born, but my pregnant lady research was rubbish, and only turned up commercially made, boring and pretty expensive choices. So the idea was put into hibernation. Until a few weeks ago when, having a conversation with some friends who use cloth, one simply said, ‘you’re quite crafty, why don’t you make your own?’. And so an obsession was born.

These are a few of my favourites:

Since then I have turned most of my old clothes pile and a chunk of my stash into a nappy of some description. I have been experimenting with ideas and looks and I’ve been planning.

I’ve got a few more plans up my sleeve. Hopefully it won’t be too long this time before I can share them with you.

At the beginning of the month I turned thirty, and thanks to the lovely Mr p&p this lily and her friends graced my dining table for the best part of two weeks.

The occasion also saw the return of the yarn fairy, only this time she sent ribbon. Lovely, spotty grosgrain ribbon in three delicious coordinating colours that was just utterly perfect for a project I’ve had in mind for a while.

Like a lot of babies, Her Drooliness has a big thing for laundry tags. She likes to stroke them with her tiny little fingers, rub them on her nose, suck them, chew them and generally ignore all other, more interesting parts of a stuffed toy in favour of them. So a taggie blanket was an obvious choice.

The aqua ribbon on the corners was a last minute addition, and came from my birthday cake. The brown fleece and Moda cotton were in my stash, and I sewed a square of plastic carrier bag in the middle so it’s lovely and crinkly. So far it’s a big hit!

(Modelled by the bark chips in the back garden!)

All in all, a very quick, cheap, satisfying project. It probably took all of about 20 minutes to make and consists entirely of gifted, free and stash materials. Just how I like it!

There’s also a tinge of sadness here because this will probably be one of my last projects as a free woman. My maternity leave is over, and from Monday I’ll be back at work. To say I’m dreading it is probably an understatement. I’ll only be working three days a week, so it could be worse, but three whole days a week away from my little person seems like so long. I’m feeling a little bit blue just thinking about it.

The kind of blue that is probably best remedied with a lovely, new, big project? Watch this space…

Something odd has sprung up in the p&p household lately. Not one, but TWO lots of fresh flowers. It’s beginning to feel a lot like spring is hovering, just around the corner. It’s very, very welcome.

The daffs were a present from Heather when she visited us this weekend, and they have been cheering up my kitchen all week. They’re hanging out in a vase I fashioned out of an empty lasagna sauce jar and a flower pot because my other vase is occupied.

Yep, that illustrates perfectly how often flowers make it into this house, that I only have one vase!

The orchids were my Valentine’s present. Red roses are all very well and good, but I’ve always had a soft spot for flowers that look a little like alien monsters. Mr p&p obviously knows me well! They’re on the way out now, but they have been making me think that maybe I should try to have flowers in the house more often. For the price of a bar of chocolate a week, a simple handful of daffs or tulips could be making the house a whole lot happier. I’ll give it a go.

In other news, Babette is growing. Slowly. It’s my background project, I do a little when I haven’t got anything else to do, so progress is limited, but it’s looking fab. I love the hodge-podge of colours – not my normal style at all!

I noticed on my stats that there’s been a mini surge of visitors this week, since Heather linked to my blog from hers, so if you’re new here – hi! It always humbles me a little if people take the time to read a little bit about me and my tiny patch of the world, and even more if they take the time to leave a comment. So thank you. All of you x

Things about parenthood I wish I’d known in advance, part 261: spending lots of money on an all-singing, all-dancing carrier is stupid, cause you can make one yourself!

(I feel compelled to point out that the back straps are the same shape and size, they just look a little wonky cause of the way they’re sitting on the dressform).

I love Phoebe’s Manduca, but there are a few things I wish were different (narrower between her knees, more streamlined, straps easier to wear crossed), and after seeing all the beautiful mei tais all over the internet, I decided I could totally make one.

I settled on a basic design somewhere between a mei tai and a soft structured carrier. I like the lightweight and streamlined look of the mei tai, but I love my buckles, so I went down a buckle tai route.

A lot of carriers have sleeping hoods, but baby girl hates having it over her head, and doesn’t stay asleep long, so I fashioned a sleeping flap that would support her head while snoozing, but that could be folded and fastened out of the way the rest of the time.

It’s not perfect, the next time I’ll have a few alterations to make, but for a first attempt I’m pretty pleased. I took it for a test run round town yesterday and while the waist belt needs some work, the rest is really comfy, probably more so than the original! And Beebs seems to like it too:

I’m already planning my next attempt!

Shortly before Christmas, a little package landed on our doorstep. Well, more realistically (but much less poetically) shortly before Christmas a little package was unceremoniously rammed through our letterbox by the postman (who has broken said letterbox three times already and who I suspect may have underlying anger issues). Destruction of our front door aside, I opened the package to find two lovely little balls of Baby Cashmerino (phwoar) in deep pink and apple green (you may have noticed that I’m a bit obsessed with pink and green together for baby girl things). They were a present for me and the little one from the lovely Heather, and came along with a card which suggested they become a pair of Legwarmies.

I carry Beebs a lot in her Manduca, and her little legs poke out and get ever so cold, so legwarmers were a fab idea, and one I set about on at once!

They’re lovely and soft, and have been a big hit around the baby group circuit! And they keep her little protuding limbs so lovely and toasty that I have immediately set about on her next pair, in self-striping and black sock yarn. Colourific!

Thank you, yarn fairy. We loved our present <3

Those who look at this blog from the site itself rather than through a reader may have noticed me tinkering about with the look of it. Don’t panic – it’s a work in progress!

While I’m tinkering, I thought I’d nip on to show you how many granny squares tall baby girl is now.

You may remember at 12 days old, she was a mere six squares:

By 9 weeks she had grown to seven:

At 3 months, she was stretching to eight:

And at 6 months, well, just take a look:

She’s 7 months next week, and I think we’re going to need to make a bigger blanket.